Frank Nitsche, of Columbia's Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory, leads expeditions to map the seafloor, from the Hudson River to the ocean around Antarctica. "We have better maps of the moon and Mars than we have of the seafloor," he said.

In line with the increases in Pacific winds, measurements by coauthor Arnold Gordon of Lamont-Doherty Earth Observatory show that flow through the main Indonesian channel, the Makassar Strait, has increased since the early 2000s.